Because Writing Wank Deserves a Separate Post

[wayfaringwordhack]

I have had a project simmering in my mind for the past few years, a project that I've done extensive planning on (fairly complete outline), down to figuring out the creation lore, religion, government, societies, laws, maps, foods, the MC and how she got that way, you name it. However, I just couldn't get to it until I finished with the current WIP. I tried on more than one occassion, like when I thought I *had* finished TTD, to get started on it, and did succeed in turning out a few chapters before I stopped again in favor of fixing TTD. Anyhow, long story short, the ultimate reason that I hesitated to use it for my NaNo project this year is because it has some themes and events that I didn't feel particularly up to handling.

It isn't that I want to run away from them; it is that at this point in my life, with the things that have happened to me recently, I don't feel passionate or maybe even capable of tackling them/doing them justice. In fact, I started and erased a post recently in which I asked people what they did once they lost the original passion or not longer felt the same way about their themes.

So, I started playing with the idea of freewriting another, largely unplanned story, one that I would just let evolve in its own fashion. However, the other day, one of those small voices tried to convince me that writing the other story, the planned out, hard story, might be the better thing to do. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because in writing it, I can crystalize some things for myself. Perhaps in writing it, I can lay some ghosts. Perhaps those painful personal experiences are just what I needed to make some difficult things come to life for a character, and I should, to use a cliché, bite the bullet and do it.

I seem to like hard stories, but they are...well, hard.

Comments

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt you'd do a good job of whatever you set your mind to.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

your confidence is staggering:)

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

With good reason.

[pjthompson]

I think you need to follow your own Muse--which is as good as saying nothing at all, I realize. I guess what I'm really saying is not to force anything but trust your instincts. And if your instincts are telling you to not do something at this time, that's okay. On the other hand, if you feel that small voice is a truer part of yourself... You're the only one who can answer this question. And like hard stories, it'ss hard. :-)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

hehe...Hard indeed. Thinking that small voice might be on to something I started slogging through all my notes last night, and boy, do I have a lot of contradicting ideas. If I *do* decide to do this hard story, I have some prewriting sorting and cutting waiting for me.